Challenge: US Dictatorship (Imperial Presidency-wank)

By which I mean a President considerably weakens Congress, restricts civil liberties, maybe declares martial law/state of emergency. If Vietnam was fought with WWII-era rationing, press censorship, etc, perhaps? Of course, Congress remains, but increasingly stretches constitutionality. What Marcos did IOTL was basically Reconstruction-era Dixie: civilian control at the federal level, while replacing provincial governments with military governors.
 
The first two things you've mentioned are already happening, albeit very, very gradually. For the full effect-- I'm not sure it's completely possible. Couldn't replace State governors, because that iss an internal affair of the states. Many states would resist. If they didn't, a lot of Americans would. To insure this dictatorship, the man is going to have to find a way to take guns away. Gradual evolution is the way to go; dwindle the rights away so slow that nobody notices until it's too late.
 
Who would be a good candidate though? NAACP leaders asked JFK to take federal control through Article 4, Section 4 of the State of Mississippi during the Oxford crisis. I'd say Nixon, the most authoritarian-minded of the candidates at the time.
 
POD before 1900, but Washington could have been a virtual Imperial President had he decided to run for more than two terms, setting a precedent.
 
FDR is a good option. Many people wanted a dictator in the White House in 1932. His habit was to err on the side of the constitution but their was support to have an American mussolini.

If not FDR, then it is around 1932 then. You need a person willing to take extra power to deal with the conditions of the USA at that time. People wanted radical changes, and powerful people wanted someone in charge fixing things.
 
Possible POD:
(1) Additional Al Quaeda attacks on the United States, with maybe one killing Dubya; and
(2) Dick Cheney had only maybe 2 or 3 heart attacks instead of 15 or so he had in OTL.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
How much trouble would I get in if I suggested Lincoln?

I recall reading a short story called "The Lincoln Train" about how Lincoln survives his assassination attempt but emerges with severe brain damage. Seward uses him as a puppet and becomes dictator through him.

A bit far fetched, maybe, but you could maybe see some proto-dictatorial "security" legislation being passed by a president who survives an assassination (JFK, Nixon, Johnson, Reagan, etc.)
 
I recall reading a short story called "The Lincoln Train" about how Lincoln survives his assassination attempt but emerges with severe brain damage. Seward uses him as a puppet and becomes dictator through him.

Not too farfetched if you were to exchange Stanton for Seward. There is a man who probably does have a dictatorial streak in him, like all the Radical Republicans.
 
To insure this dictatorship, the man is going to have to find a way to take guns away.

I'm not exactly sure that's true. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had more Kalashnikov's than people. A number of dictatorships and tyrannies coexisted with highly weaponized populations.

Indeed, it might make things easier. I could see a Presidential dictatorship authorizing loyalist militias to root out traitors, dissidents, illegal aliens, uppity blacks, etc. Give these guys a relative impunity from the law, and they'd happily purge away, with the whole thing being arms length.

An American Dictatorship would firmly have the media in hand, and would promote the cult of the President. It would probably be quite effective. And as long as the President had a few scapegoats handy - blacks, jews, gays, immigrants, hispanics etc., I don't see an armed populist uprising.
 
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I think Harry Turtledove's short story "Joe Steele" portrays a plausible scenario for a dictatorial US. Just replace the OTL Stalin being born in the US with an ATL analogue.
 

Faraday Cage

Is there some ambitious, paranoid, charismatic populist that could wind up in the White House in the 30's?
 

King Thomas

Banned
You need a POD where Al Queda, with legally owned guns, carry out some horrible massacare, and the President gets Congress to disarm the people. Of course, that is only one of the steps towards dictatorship.
 
How about wolfpaw's TL, where we might see Robert Kennedy become the American Ferdinand Marcos? Except he's incorruptible, no EJ, and no corporatism.
 
About guns, all you need is one or two armed people at the right time and the American Caesar goes down.

The entire Army of the Potomac could not protect Lincoln, after all. I would imagine there's a reason Saddam had all those body doubles.

In a more macro scale, I posted a scenario in Chat (I think) entitled "The Anatomy of an American Civil War" that's the TL for one of my unfinished novels rendered obsolete by political events. It basically features a faux Bush-Cheney establishing an American dictatorship by abusing war powers.
 
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